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It is important to mention the cotostrophe of the Jewish people, the most terrible place in Kiev - Babi Yar, where at the end of September 1941, 33 771 people were shot - which was almost the entire Jewish population of Kiev. The truth about the Babi Yar is collected by pieces today from Kiev archives and people's stories and memories. This truth is part of the history of the city ...

The monument to the victims of the Kureniv tradegy, opened in March 2006.

In 1950, the city authorities decided to pour Babi Yar with a liquid waste from neighboring brick plants. The revenue was blocked by an earthen rampart for the purpose of not flooding the residential areas. But the shaft parameters and a drainage system didn't meet the safety standards. And on March 13, 1961, as a result of the rapid thouving of snow, the shaft couldn't stand the pressure of water, it formed mudflow up to 14 meters high, rushed towards Kurenyovka. The liquid pulp was flooded with an area of about 30 hectares across from the place where an Orthodox priests were executed in November 1941.

Babi Yar gained a worldwide fame as a place of mass executions of civilians, mainly Jews, Gypsies, Karaites of Kiev, as well as a Soviet prisoners of war carried out by the Geman occupation forces and Ukrainian collaborators in 1941. At the end of September 1941, the Sanderkommando captured nine leading Rabbis in Kiev, and ordered them to make an appeal: “After the sanitation, all Jews and their children, as an elite nation, will be transferred to the safe places...”

On September 27-28, the Nazi authorities ordered that on September 29, the Jewish population of the city must arrive at the appointed gathering place, with their documents and valuable belongings by 8 o’clock in the morning. If anyone would fail to comply with the order, will be executed. About 2000 ads were posted around the city. At the same time desinformation about the intention to conduct a cencus and the resettlement of Jews spread thoughout the janitors and managers. Most of the arrivals were women,children and the elderly( because the adult male population was drafted in to the army), except for the Jews who were representatives of other nationalities and who were also from the international families.

The checkpoint was located at the end of the street, behind the secret office. About 30-40 people were asighned to the checkpoint, where they had to take all of the belongings and force them to undress. Then the local policemen with their metal sticks drove the people into the passeges in the mound on the edge of a revine that was 20-25 meters deep. At the end of a tunnel there was a machine gunner. After the ditch was filled with 2-3 layers of corpses, it was covered with a special chemical. It sounds crazy, but the Nazis tried to build an experimental soap factory in Babi Yar. To produce the soap the Germans used left over corpes. Good thing that they didn't have time to finish building it. When the Nazi soldiers were departing from Kiev, they tried to hide the traces of their terrible crimes.

In August-September 1943, the Nazi partially destroyed the camp, dug up and burned in open “ovens” tens of thousands of corpses, and the left over bones were grinder on the machine that was brought from Germany, and the ashes were scattered around the outskirts of Babi Yar.

On the night of September 29, 1943, Babi Yar held an uprising of 329 suicide bombers, only 18 people were saved, the rest of 311 were shot. The prisoners who survived that sad night, witnessed attempts by the Nazi soldiers to hide the facts of mass executions.